The demise of Ralph Gilles came swiftly but only after ball finally got rolling. Gilles' ego and lack of vision actually made it a miracle that Generation 5 ever came to fruition at all.
The sales of former SRT and current Dodge Viper are at all time low and there is absolutely nothing that anyone at Chrysler or Fiat will do to change it.
The current discount of 7500 per 2013 SRT is a laughable one, considering that dealers offering 20k and more discounts still cannot sell the cars sitting on their lots for the last two years.
As it is, the only saving grace, a 0 percent Chrysler financing for a minimum of 72 months, when combined with the discounts could help ridding of the remaining 2013 and 2014 but amazingly enough, nothing at all is being done to make it happen.
As it is, the chances of reactivating Viper assembly line is non existent, the former CEO has disappeared from the public view in disgrace and the whole concept of Viper as a bad boy American supercar is fully dead.
Overall, this is a very sad situation since at the current pricing, Viper is certainly a considerably better alternative to the mass market plastic fantastic POS Corvette C7 Stingray but way too few people understand this part.
Based on my personal dealings with Gilles and people from his office, his demise was long overdue, long before Generation 5 was even considered but... it is what it is.
The best what can happen now is laying the Viper to permanent rest, there is no development money or good will coming from Fiat owners. By all accounts, Generation 5 should never happen in the first place, at least not the way it was executed and led by Gilles. Some bad voodoo came this guy's way (pun fully intended).
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